Angela Hernandez told rescuers she plunged off the cliff after swerving to avoid hitting an animal.
Photograph: Social Media/Reuters

An Oregon woman who disappeared a week ago has been rescued after surviving at the bottom of a Californian coastal cliff by drinking water using the hose from the radiator of her car which had veered off the road.

Angela Hernandez, 23, of Portland was found by a pair of hikers on Friday evening after they discovered her wrecked Jeep Patriot SUV partially submerged at the bottom of a 200-foot (61m) cliff in the Big Sur area, a spokesman for Monterey County Sheriff’s Office, John Thornburg, said.

Her disappearance had attracted widespread public attention after she and her vehicle were last seen on a surveillance camera video at a Carmel gas station on 6 July, about 50 miles (80km) north of the stretch of Highway 1 where she was found.

A couple who were camping nearby discovered Hernandez conscious, breathing and with a shoulder injury, Thornburg said. She had, it was reported, been able to get out of her damaged vehicle but could not climb back up the cliff to the main road. It was not clear whether she had any food with her.

Rescuers managed to hoist her up the cliff where she was transferred to a helicopter which flew her to a nearby hospital. She was reported to be in fair and stable condition but appeared to have suffered a concussion during the collision, the police said in a statement.

Hernandez told investigators she had swerved to avoid hitting an animal on the highway and plunged over the cliff north of Nacimiento-Fergusson Road.

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The police initially said she stayed alive “by drinking water from the radiator of her vehicle,” however later retracted that statement to say she stayed alive by using “a radiator hose from the vehicle to drink water from a spring.”

“It’s usually the fall that gets them, or the ocean that gets them, and she was lucky to survive both,” said Thornburg.

Hernandez was on a road trip from her home in Portland to visit her sister Isabel in Lancaster, Los Angeles County, when she crashed.

“My sister survived seven days alone 200ft (61) down a cliff on HW1,” her sister Isabel Hernandez said in a Facebook post on Saturday. “This is very traumatic and will be a slow recovery process.”

“My sister is alive, she’s talking, and she’s still trying to come to understanding everything,” she wrote. “She’s a fighter and she fought this long and she will continue to. It’s not going to be an easy recovery.”

Her sister added: “In her accident, she has lost everything. Including her car, which was her livelihood.”

Angela Hernandez was found by hikers seven days after her 4WD crashed into the ocean. She survived by drinking water using the car’s radiator hose. Photograph: Social Media/Reuters

Hernandez told her rescuers that to stay hydrated she used a radiator hose to siphon water from a nearby stream, according to a local TV station KGO-TV. “I just want to thank everybody that helped,” Hernandez’s sister, Isabel Hernandez, told the news station.

After not hearing from her for days, her family grew increasingly concerned. A $10,000 reward was offered for information leading to her whereabouts. Family members travelled to the area and police began searching on the ground and from the air.

Investigators eventually picked up a signal from her cell phone that bounced off a tower near Davenport in Santa Cruz County, about 40 miles away from where she had last been spotted on a CCTV video camera.

On Monday night, Hernandez’s phone stopped sending or receiving a signal. It had either run out of battery been turned off, police said at the time. Her sister said it was uncharacteristic of her to be out of touch.

Her best friend, Shawn Lyons, told a TV station: “There’s no reason for her to, kind of like, disappear.” She said Hernandez was a kindhearted and easygoing person who wants to be a musician.

The search in Monterey County was frustrated, according to the local sheriff’s department, on some days by heavy fog which made air searches difficult or impossible.

• This article was amended on 19 July 2018. After publication, the California Highway Patrol retracted their statement that Hernandez stayed alive “by drinking water from the radiator of her vehicle”. The article has been amended to reflect that, and include their re-issued statement.